Link tracking may be used to monitor HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) traffic on a large network of websites at page, subpage and link levels. Each HTTP request for a tracked portion of a webpage causes information to be logged on a web server at a link level and a page level, identifying the HTTP request for the tracked portion of the webpage. Typically, the HTTP requests are organized into page views which include respective sets of link views, as a user may have clicked on multiple links on the same webpage. The information that the web server logs may then be analyzed to determine how users are navigating through the website, a click frequency for each page, subpage, and/or link, a conversion rate, etc.
Conventionally, website owners perform link tracking by adding tracking information to every hyperlink that was going to be tracked. However, adding the tracking information to a plurality of hyperlinks in a webpage can significantly increase a size of the webpage, requiring more storage space on the web server and resulting in a greater webpage load times. If the webpage requires a significant load time, the user may abort loading the webpage, which may result in the frequency with which the website is visited decreasing. Because many websites generate revenue through advertising, a decrease in views or use of the website may result in decreased advertising revenues.
Thus, there exists a need to provide tracking or otherwise monitor user navigation through a website without adversely affecting the user's experience.